State-of-the-art video coding schemes, such as MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, and the upcoming HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding), support inter-picture prediction utilizing motion-compensated prediction from more than one reference pictures. These schemes also support a special type of bi-direction inter-picture prediction where both directions are pointing to the same direction in time. FIG. 1 shows an example of such forward bi-predictive inter-picture prediction. In the case where there are more than one reference picture, two lists of reference pictures are created for bi-predictive inter-picture prediction and the reference pictures that are closer to the current picture (i.e., temporal distance) are sorted to the top of the lists by a predefined process.
It is against this background that the present invention has been developed.